Annotator is an internet-based educational tool intended for submitting, annotating and returning translations, text revisions and text production exercises.

Exercise, solution and consultative solution are displayed in the same window providing a good overview of the exercise of interest. The tool's comprehensive annotation and comparison options give the teacher and the student a possibility of painting a picture of the student's progress and the effect of the teaching. When results are compared over time, an effect and process awareness is developed which is not usually present in module-oriented teaching. Thus, owing to the open cooperation between students and teacher, the tool benefits from the electronic medium instead of trying to create a copy of the traditional educational forms.

E-learning 
By using Annotator the teacher may set an exercise with complete consultative annotations, and the students may subsequently submit a solution to the exercise and thus gain access to a consultative solution. Then the teacher corrects the students' solutions by using the annotation tool and returns them to the students who may now compare their own solution to other students' solutions. The students may also see their own previous exercise solution and see if the progress has been satisfying.

Naturally, the teacher has access to the same comparison options. S/he may for instance compare the frequency of the same type of error and thus continuously adjust his/her teaching taking into account the present students and their needs. To facilitate the teacher's work, exercises and annotations may be reused from student to student and from class to class. This releases time for a more comprehensive and individualised annotation helping the student in his/her further progress.  

Below is a description of what a typical working process may be in Annotator.

Create an exercise 
When a teacher chooses New exercise in the menu, s/he is sent to a page, where s/he may add various information about the exercise. Once the information has been saved, the exercise text is either typed in or copied and pasted into a small scale word processing tool segment by segment. If you wish to add a consultative solution, it is added in the right column.

Edit and annotate an exercise 
Instead of creating a new exercise, you may choose to copy an exercise that has been created and shared by teachers in other Annotators. The teacher may edit and annotate in the shared exercises by clicking the edit icon (the pencil) above the segment s/he wishes to edit. This opens the word processing tool, and the segment is thus editable.

If the teacher wishes to attach an annotation to a given word in a text segment, s/he clicks the annotation icon in the word processing tool and adds his/her comment in the new window. This procedure is also used when correcting exercise solutions.

Submit an exercise solution 
When the student logs on to Annotator, s/he is presented with an Exercise overview. In this list, all returned, submitted and unsubmitted exercises from the course will appear. To create a solution, the student clicks the exercise title. Subsequently, s/he may see all the teacher's information about the exercise, and s/he may type in or copy and paste his/her solution segment by segment. Once the student has submitted the finished solution, s/he no longer has access to edit the solution which has been sent to annotation by the teacher.

See annotated exercise solution 
Once the teacher has annotated the solution and returned it to the student, the student gets access to the corrected solution through the exercise overview.

Annotations are shown as yellow highlighted text. The comment appears by clicking the text. The annotations a teacher has made in a student's solution are only visible to the teacher and the student her/himself.  

Annotator is applicable to all educational contexts where an integrated exercise and solution display allowing for annotation is desirable. It is our intention to have many different Annotators. The teachers using the various Annotators will be able to share exercises, annotations and tips and thus optimise the use of the tool.

Annotator is still being developed.